


Buy Me a Rose

by HerbertBest



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: Altered chronology, Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fad Dieting Mention, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Married Life, Medical Procedures, Medication, Reverse Chronology, Romance, lovemaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 12:31:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19723744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerbertBest/pseuds/HerbertBest
Summary: Dan and Holly grapple with the changes parenthood have wrought upon their relationship.  Can they ever get back their mojo?





	Buy Me a Rose

**Author's Note:**

> For probably obvious-to-others-reasons, this will likely be my last commanderbang fic for some time (though I'll never say never). This was written for my 18+ fic and art big bang, The Big Sexbang back in February! Please click above to enjoy the other works in the collection.

“I’m never, ever gonna have a baby.”

Holly wrinkled her nose at Suzy. “Doesn’t Arin want kids?”

“I’m not Arin,” Suzy said. 

“Well, that’s what I thought. Then Dan happened.” She realized she was speaking about her husband as if he were the Spanish flu or a natural disaster, and winced at herself. It had been a long pregnancy and he’d been very sympathetic to her pain. Maybe too sympathetic. She’d held his hair back as he puked as often as he’d held hers back.

“I just watched you get ripped from butt to…other places. No thanks.” She was holding Tamara against her chest and making goofy faces at her, which negated her point.

“It’s not my body, sweetie.”

“Right, so Arin can like, pull babies out of his butt and I’ll get to keep wearing heels and dye my hair.” She said this in the sweetest voice Holly had ever heard while continuing to stare at the baby.

“Arin, do you want to make butt babies with Suzy?” Holly had seen the edge of his sold shoulder, his hand, waiting by the doorway.

“What the heck are you talking about?” Arin asked. He and Dan came through the door simultaneously, nearly crowding each other out like a bad sitcom, and each of them bearing gifts for Holly. Dan held out a blue bear gently, and Arin held out a paper cup of Peets coffee.

Sweet fanciful Merlin. She could have caffeine again.

She grabbed at the coffee and sipped it down greedily while Dan got on his knees and stared at their daughter for what felt like hours. His fingers rushed along the edge of her red hair, and eventually he took the baby in his arms, holding the stuffed animal over Tamara’s head. 

He approached gently and sat beside her.

Neither of them noticed when Arin and Suzy left the room; the cocoon around them was thick and warm, and it isolated them together.

She had no idea what would happen when they came home. The baby was so tiny and the world outside so dangerous. How could they save themselves?

How could they ever protect her?

**** 

_Two years before_

The struts on this truck were surprisingly wobbly for a recently manufactured, rock-solid vehicle. Holly felt like she was kneeling on Jell-O as she bent over Dan like some kind of nymphette and pulled him to her lips by the collar.

He muttered indistinguishable moans against her lips as she ground down and held on, finally breaking away with a helpless whimper. “Oh fuck, Holly!”

Some silly part of her brain – the part of her made all giddy by hormones and ridiculousness – wanted to tell Dan that that was what they were doing. To be more precise, she was straddling his lap in the front seat of his brand-new truck and was sucking on his neck while she unbuckled his jeans. Dan’s fingers tangled up in the enclosures of her bra and he was trying to hold on to her by her waist. 

Holly normally didn’t do this. Holly normally never even felt this way, let alone considered the sway of physical attraction. She meant it when she said she was demisexual. It took love to bring these feelings out in her.

And oh, did she love Dan.

Loved Dan so much that it felt like their relationship had flipped some switch for her. It wasn’t just that she wanted him – it was that she wanted him constantly. Thought about him, of course – in idle moments over her morning coffee, when she was trying to build a house in Animal Crossing, when she was streaming, building a new character sheet for her latest game, shopping for groceries, feeding the birds, or washing her hair. Wanted to be with him in ways that weren’t purely sexual. But she but also _wanted_ him. Had made best friends with her shower head because of him. Had actually gone to the doctor, worrying that something weird was happening to her, these flashes of heat. 

Perimenopause? Nope. Hormones. It was humiliating.

But it was that simple. He was the demi in her demisexuality; she was into him and that was it. 

And only him. Which was a pain in the butt, sometimes.

She had always considered herself a solitary witch, happy with the animals, until they’d ended up in neighboring cubicles at Maker. Everything else – his musical rocket ride, everything happening with the show, her life as a famous D&D player – had been a nonstop shock. Climbing him in the front seat of his car after a mediocre sci fi movie and dinner felt downright normal.

Abruptly, she became aware of how frantic he was. Dan’s hips were rabbit thrusting up against hers; he was turning red around the neck and ears. His big hands – formerly gentlemanly perched at the dips of her hips – fluttered uselessly. “Fuck, babe? Baby, Holly!” Dan was groping for some sort of middle ground, trying to still her churning hips. Holly hadn’t realized she was _moving_ ; she’d just been enjoying the sensation, kissing him, rubbing herself into the seam of his jeans.

“What?” she asked. And realized she did not sound happy and perky. She pushed back her sweaty – and currently bright pink – hair and raised an eyebrow. 

“Um….can I unbuckle my pants?” he asked her forehead.

That sounded like a wonderful idea. “Please,” she said. “Was I pinching you somehow?” Holly, lacking a cock, did not know what happened to them when they boned up in jeans. Other boyfriends, bad experiences with written and visual porn, and her long, long relationship with Ross had taught her varying, contradictory things about penises; she had no idea if it actually hurt to have the head press against a zipper.

“No,” he flushed and rubbed at his reddening cheeks. The fingers surrounding her waist flexed gently. Then his hands left her entirely and were at the buckle of his jeans. “But I was going to ruin this lovely evening by jizzing the hell out of my pants.”

“Oh,” she said. In spite of herself she felt and sounded quite pleased as she shifted, spreading her knees wider so he had room to work with. Dan almost broke the land-speed record for pants removal as he shucked down his jeans past his knees and maneuvered his dick through the fly of his boxers. His cock quivered in the air between them, tapping against the midpoint of her skirt, then shuddering back to slap his torso.

He was panting as he latched onto her neck. His hands were groping away at her chest, losing all of his sophistication as Holly grabbed onto his narrow shoulders, then the back of the seat. Dan gently ground his face against her cleavage before surfacing. The soulful look in his eyes would be comical, were not his gazes and sighs all directed at her. “How do you want me to be?” he asked her.

Holly’s sex-fogged brain refused to parse his words correctly. “How do I want you to be?”

Dan squirmed. “Do you want me to be sweet? Or rough? Do you want me to roleplay? Do funny voices make you cream?”

“Dan!”

He kept going on quickly, as if getting the words out on time and with full force would win him some sort of prize. “I can do any kinks you want, too, but that’s going to be pretty hard out here. I could probably bind you up with a shoelace…”

“Dan!” She kissed him between the eyes. “Why don’t you just try being you?”

He blinked up at her. “That was an option?” 

She groaned and pulled him into her cleavage. He sucked on her breast through her blouse and – no, that wouldn’t do, everyone in the apartment would know they’d been fooling around in his truck. She hauled the shirt up and pushed him closer, and Dan sucked a cotton-covered breast into her mouth. Holly ground herself again into his cock and his hands came forward to pin her in place. He contented himself by switching between her breasts, kneading her butt, and letting her rub his increasingly hard cock between their bellies.

Then he broke away. “Baby? Babe! Babe!” He was sighing into her shoulder, his face rubbing its way across her collarbone. “I don’t want to make love to you here. We don’t have enough room and you deserve wine and candles and chocolate…chocolate body paint..”

It was like being doused in cold water. She needed an orgasm, somehow – but would ignore the pounding in her body, if he wanted to stop. She snapped her fingers. “Dan. Come back to me.”

He blinked at her and grinned. “What? I’m not allowed to have dirty dreams?”

“Not if you want mister happy to get softer.”

He made a sour face. “Please, I beg of you – do not call it mister happy…”

“Oooh, will that work?” She leaned her head against his chin, filling her nose with the scent of smoke and cinnamon.

He rolled his eyes. “Why uh…don’t we try a little bit of oral action?”

“You make it sound like we’re gonna be shooting at each other’s tongues,” she said. But she untied the knot at the waist of her skirt and laid it aside, and Dan rested on his back. They elbowed each other, kneed each other, laughed and swore and rolled their eyes at the ridiculousness of human bodies. Then she was face-to-face with his cock, and at least from here she understood what was necessary.

Sloppy-rough strokes, and long, deep dives. The feel of him, hot and insistent, slipping down her throat, the give of her body all around his, and the friction of her tongue taking swipes around the head of his cock and then down, knowing hair and soft skin and heavy veins.

Dan, between her thighs, his face buried into the sticky heaven of her pussy, was busily, frantically nosing through her labia. He was expert but encouraged by the hunger of her sucking mouth to move more frantically against her hands. He didn’t settle on her clit until she was shaking around him. Even then, he didn’t directly attack it.

Holly buried her nose in Dan’s sparse, neatly-trimmed pubic hair. The scent of musk and heat rolled over her senses and made her sweat, made the yearning even sharper. When she released him he was so solid that he was throbbing on his own, standing erect. Dan’s grip felt like an actual vice as his fingers bit into her hip.

“Fuck!” he muttered against the inside of her thigh, muffled by Holly’s flesh, muffled by teeth settled into his upper lip. Holly took that as a cue to take him all the way back down her throat and then rub his balls with her right hand. That balanced her weight on her left elbow and left her lying crookedly, but Holly didn’t care, didn’t even fight it as her back cramped and she rubbed her pussy against his stubbly face and felt him finally begin licking her clit and then sucking. Her whole body collapsed forward. His hand squeezed her knee; a plain signal. She redoubled her own efforts.

Dan came first – his moan sounded like a note of defeat and a sigh of release as he started pumping against her tongue and a slick, sour-salty taste accompanying it. Holly worked the base of his shaft until she felt him shrink slightly, and then released his cock.

“Good boy,” she said roughly, and let out a laugh of delighted shock as he gasped and another, thin thread of come jetted from the head of his cock, his belly trembling against her breasts

Dan began to eat her with true determination then, and Holly held on to his thighs, let the pleasure roll over her, rubbing her forearm against her chest, mumbling her pleasure. When it came it took her by surprised and knocked her over, left her squeezing around nothing, left her moaning and gasping.

Dan regained his footing more quickly than she did – helping her to sit up, finding Kleenex, helping her right her underwear and shoving his cock back into place. She opened her eyes and saw his serene expression, and the silly, melting look that crossed his face and made her smile right back.

Then he spoke. “Marry me.”

She pulled away and stared at him as if he’d suddenly told her the moon was made of paper. “What did you say?”

Dan gulped, and there was clear, obvious fear in his face. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulder. “Marry me,” he repeated.

“Did I kick you in the head by mistake when you were eating me out?” she wondered.

“Holly,” he said intently. “Um…I never thought I’d have to do this.”

“Why don’t you quote some Def Leppard,” she suggested. “It might loosen you up.” He wrinkled his nose. “Rush?”

He started to tear up, and then from the bellows of his lungs and the depths of his throat came, “"I don't believe in the stars or the planets. Or angels watching from above. But I believe there's a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love. And make it last…" Holly’s hands fell to her lap. He took one, carefully, as if he were afraid that mere contact between them might hurt her. “I’ve been through this four times, babe. I know it’s hard – I know we’ve got our jobs and lives and you want to get out of LA and it’s totally okay if you don’t want to like, do the traditional thing. I can like, live near you forever and just come visit when you want to slam it and…”

She pulled him to her by handfuls of hair, his beard scratching her upper lip, the underside of her chin. “Okay,” she said, and let his large hands enfold her. “Let’s try.”

*** 

Holly came awake to the itch of something mending and a vast hunger. 

And Dan’s singing from a rolling chair near the bed with their daughter I his arms.

_“…I don't believe in destiny  
Or the guiding hand of fate  
I don't believe in forever  
Or love as a mystical state..”_

The baby was quiet in his arms, little hands waving at nothing, and Dan carefully pressed his lips to a spot at the crown of her head and breathed, holding on.

Holly’s heart beat softly along with the rhythm. Things hadn’t been easy since her pregnancy had begun. Dan had been eager, sympathetic, curious, cautious – and she’d been trying to regain a stake of her own in her body as it grew and changed and swelled and leaked beyond her control. Dan’s sympathy for her had resulted him his getting an ulcer so big he puked acid all over his own shoes at her ultrasound. 

She remembered, with great shame, that she’d yelled at him while he cried and a tech helped him rinse his mouth of the sour and bile. But her sympathy had had limits. They’d both been frazzled. She’d been lost in the honeymoon phase they’d been indulging in, to be fair. 

She could still remember what that felt like. But now…

How much was the baby going to change? Was she still going to be her, or was she going to be stuck in the role of Good Reliable Holly, the baby-minder, the nursemaid, the constant amiable and wonderful friend?

These were questions she should have asked herself before she’d agreed to go whole-hog bareback with him. But…well, she’d not done a lot of thinking while living this relationship through.

Dan had a funny way of going to her head like that.

Then she realized he was watching her, peeking through curls let loose by a messy ponytail. “Babe,” he said, “What do you need? What do you want? I’ll go right out and get it, just tell me…”

“I don’t need anything. I was just watching you together.”

He gave her one of his dumb, toothy grins. The baby made a querulous sound and he looked down at the bundle in his arms with genuine fear.

“Dan, she’s not a bomb,” said Holly. 

“Are you sure? I changed her first diaper while you were out and all I can say is something exploded down there.”

Holly made a face at him. “Dan…”

He got carefully up and came over, carrying the baby in his arms. “She’s like…some kind of wonderful or something,” Dan said. “A miracle. Something else, isn’t she?”

Tamara made another querulous sound that settled into regular squawking noises. Holly sighed and took hold of the baby. She weighed next to nothing in Holly’s gentle hold. 

“Does she need to eat again?” Holly asked.

Dan shook his head. “You were only out for a few hours,” he said. “Next feeding’s in twenty. That’s why she’s in here with us.”

“Okay,” she said. And then she really looked at Tamara, at her baby blue eyes, the fuzzy-sleepy expression she wore. The little bits of Dan and of herself that were glittering up like buried treasure, and the feelings that everything was possibly impossible. 

If only her doubts would shut up for a minute. 

Oh well. She supposed every single person had their own fears, their own worries about their abilities.

Dan bent over them. He was a personified cloak of innocence and protection, trying to shield them both from the evils of the big, bad world outside the window. She wanted to fight against it. Wanted to take care of herself. Wanted to tell him that nothing had changed in the fundamental flow of her DNA. Couldn’t he see she was still Holly, that he was still Dan? 

The baby would be their own person. But who would they be, once the fact of her presence settled over their lives?

**** 

The first time Dan kissed Holly, they were standing outside in the rain, next to her favorite coffee shop. 

She realized two things straight off – the height difference was going to be a problem, and the years Dan had spent kissing other people had thoroughly and almost disgustingly made him a perfect kisser. She had clung to his long arms and tilted her head back – it was soaked, the blue was probably going to run out of it and she’d have to redo it in the morning, but those fears and feelings could wait for awhile.

When she opened her eyes, Dan had stuck his tongue out to taste the rain. It was such a moment of kismet that she laughed, and he looked up, startled out of his trance. 

“You are all wet,” he said amiably, with a little dreamy note of romance in the depths of his throat. 

“I was too hot,” she told him. They walked back to his truck with their fingers laced lightly together. Over their heads the storm was ending – stars began to twinkle as the. Before entering the passenger side seat she tilted her head back one more time. It was starrier than she could ever remember seeing it be before.

Dan raised an eyebrow, then peeked at the expanse of sky that had so captivated Holly. “What are you seeing?” he asked.

She smiled. “The stars look different tonight!”

He nudged her lightly. “You son of a…” 

“What?” she asked. “No points for the Cowboy Bebop joke?”

“No, you get all the points,” he said, and his voice was so sweet in tone she might have spread it across the fluffy center of a biscuit. 

*** 

The first few weeks passed by in a haze of baby puke and diaper services. Holly barely remembered to be an actual human being between taking care of Tam and trying to run the house. Dan, bless him, tried to stick close to the house for her, writing songs on the couch between walking the floor with the baby, trying to make sure Holly actually ate and went to her doctor’s appointments while he managed to get practical work done. 

Holly hadn’t thought of witchery, of costume design – of anything other than cowlike zombie-marching through life – for weeks, and she realized that with a start that so much time had passed, marked by the baby’s roundness, her development toward personality and humanhood.

By the time Holly finally got a good, full night of sleep, she realized it had been almost a month since she’d touched her husband. And she was still a month away from having her stitches removed and being comfortably back in business even to masturbate.

Which sucked. A lot.

She noticed that Dan was restless, but he was too kind to say anything to her – what he was telling Arin on Grumps about his habits and his proclivities she didn’t want to know and did not dare ask. But she was aware of his long showers and longer bathroom times. She didn’t need a neon sign to figure out what he was doing with his time. 

She knew what she wanted to do about it but well – practical Holly, the best of wives and the best of women. Self-sacrificing and effacing. A drudge. 

Part of her was rolling her eyes and sighing at her panic, her ever-directive anxiety which bubbled over and groaned at the back of her hissing, corrective mind. They were greasy and tired enough, why was she adding baggage onto the already overloaded table? Did she even have the energy to be sexy anymore? Did she have the wit to try to seduce him?

She didn’t really have a conscious seduction plan in mind when she curled up against Dan’s back and kissed his neck. The artificiality of her gesture felt a little bit above ridiculous when Dan responded to her touch by grinding back into her. 

“Mmph Holly.” He rolled toward her and was all elbows and arms and legs. “We can’t do anything cool. You totally have your stitches in.”

“I know,” she said. He still had his glasses on, and she kissed the top of his head, hearing their glasses clink together as she quickly kissed his lips and then slid purposeful hands down his torso. “I mean, you’re not…walking wounded,” she said, flushing slightly.

“I know,” he said dumbly. “I was there.”

“And,” she pointed out, fingers brushing along his small, flat nipples until he squirmed and grumbled, “There’s no reason you can’t be happy even if I can’t have the same kind of feelings that you do.”

He said nothing to her as she played with his spare body. But his eyes were widening, and the crotch of his pajamas were tenting.

She had needs, not that she could ever dream of tending to them while she was half-mended. “Well,” she said with practical cheerfulness, “I had an episiotomy. You didn’t.” And she pulled out his cock, which was just as solid, just as tempting, just as firm and ever-ready as it had been before Tam.

Dan being Dan was caught somewhere between sleazy appreciation for her choices, but he was still flushed, shy, and even trying to squirm away from her touch. “Holly!” he squeaked.

“Mmm?” She stroked him, thoughtful and silent. Dan moved against her as if her were being tortured by hundreds of warm, soft fingertips. He moved through the softness of her hand, and then grunted when the contact grew too dry.

She groped over toward the bedside table, dug around until she found some lube – it was tragically the flavored kind, and it was going to leave a sticky mess on his cock, but at least _he_ could wash himself up without worry. It was easy enough to let him wrap himself around her and sigh gustily. “Baby doll, you’re gonna kill me.”

“You’re not dying,” she told him. “You’re flying away.” She took a break to reach for more lube, and then her gentle up-and-down motions became more earnest. “I’m going to make you happier than you’ve ever been.”

“I…Holly.” He was so hot and thick in her hand that she wondered how he could stay coherent.

She felt less like a practical, self-effacing drudge; more like the naughty video vixen of his dreams, as if she could crawl around on a car hood, throwing her hair around, spread-eagled like Tawny Kitaen. Holly never thought of herself that way, not even at her most erotically charged – a disaster cow, wasn’t that what she’d called herself in front of Blue Jay? But when Dan looked at her that way, with his big brown eyes wide and warm, begging her with every little moan and sigh and reflexive flick of his hips. The little voices stopped howling at the back of her head. They stayed quiet and content. She moved her hand faster, and Dan rucked his hair into a nest of waves against the pillow.

“Holly, Holly,” he chanted. “Baby can I kiss you?”

She nodded. He pressed himself against her and they sank together, heat against heat. Dan moaned into her mouth, sucking down sweetness, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, his features twisting with mottled ecstasy. He whimpered and moaned into her mouth, his slim fingers going white as he clutched her waist. Hotter and thicker than before, trembling slightly, she knew to tease the head of his cock. Dan fell apart instantaneously. He tried to muffle the sounds behind his fist but Holly could feel the spasms seize him up with fervent intensity and then drop him to the mattress, leaving a hot, wet trail of wet release against his belly and teeshirt.

All at once, he came back to earth, and noticed…well, how sticky they were. “Eww,” he remarked under his breath. She laughed at his self-reporachment as he wiped away at the gooey mess he’d left behind, then got out of bed. “No no, stay there – milady deserves a warm hand towel.”

Holly snorted. From her bedroom, Tam started making querulous noises and she groaned against her hand. “The baby…” she began.

“No, let me wash my hands!” and he did so, then shrugged and shucked down his boxers and t-shirt. He covered himself with a robe, and was in the baby’s nursery before she could wipe her own hand clean. 

He came back with a hungry Tam, and by then Holly had already pulled her boob out. The amount of food that poured into the child seemed astronomical, but she gulped it all down with an almost greedy pull.

Holly kissed the crown of her head. “Hungry little baby,” she cooed.

“Of course she is. You can’t give her any seebs,” Dan pointed out, even daring to pronounce the invisible ‘b’. He snuggled up beside her, already getting visibly sleepy. She thought to tell him that maybe he was being bratty. Just a little bratty.

Holly yawned and waited until Tam’s stomach was full. 

She hadn’t planned on this little life detour. But it was an interesting one.

*** 

It was raining in Hawaii.

Holly didn’t think it was possible. All she’d known of the islands – from the paradise her grandfather had made it sound – the warm sun never stopped shining and there were friendly birds one every single beach. That was until she and Dan had decided to head there for her birthday, and then the skies had opened up. Water sluiced down onto the red-brick colored roof; they ejected themselves violently from the gutters. Enormous, vibrantly-colored plants soaked up the endless flow of water, and the lifelong islanders who surrounded them in their daily gamboling trundled along through it all with gentle good humor.

Holly felt something close to a spoiled kumquat, stewing in sticky tropical dampness that barely went away whenever she took a shower. Dan was quietly, almost desperately depressed; all of the activities he’d planned had been intended for warm, tropical weather. Instead they hung around the hotel like ghosts, texting and Facetiming with their friends and relatives. She and Dan had to put on plastic raincoats to take their morning walks out into the natural paradise, but their excursions were depressingly brief. Lightning made it too dangerous to swim, and the chooks and turtles brooded away from the danger of the torrents.

The staff of the resort where they’d parked themselves were, at least, understanding. Maybe they were determined to avoid ending up lowering their Yelp rating, or maybe they were amused by these Haole nerds who were so determinedly trying to think of something, anything, to do while the gods tried to rinse them off the face of the earth. In any event they found themselves on the receiving end of several luscious breakfasts and unlimited access to HBO.

And he hadn’t touched her all week.

Holly knew why. Dan had deliberately planned their first intercourse with all of the marshaling determination of an ant rolling a ball of dung across a barren desert prairie, which was amazing for a man who never planned his sexual encounters and never dared anticipate them. Holly knew him well enough to understand him in way she’d never understood any other man. He never, ever did this, which was a pretty good indication of how special he thought the relationship was, how special he thought _she_ was. But that didn’t leave Holly feeling like much more than an impregnable fortress, which was a less than sexy feeling.

So they were walking on the beach, the rain pounding down around their ears, and Holly’s thighs were sticking to the vinyl raincoat, to the sides of her torso. She and Dan were striding hand in hand, fingers testing the temperature of their love, the heat of the day, trying to face down everything without worrying about the fact that her boyfriend had done nothing but hold her hand when, two weeks ago he was all over her, trying to make things as romantic and special as possible. She wanted to cry. She wanted to chew through her own wrist from the frustration.

“I’m sorry, Holly,” he said softly, and abruptly.

The steam engine of Holly’s panic derailed with a thud. “But why?”

“Because I wanted this week to be amazing for you. I wanted everything to be perfect and instead…” Thunder rumbled over their heads. “We could’ve stayed in LA and been drier.”

She looped her arms around his middle. “If we did that,” she reminded him, “then we wouldn’t know what the smell of plumeria drifting in through the window and tickling our noses feels like.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But…”

“And we wouldn’t have gotten to have breakfast at that pancake place that Arin’s completely obsessed with,” Holly reminded him. “And we wouldn’t be watching this big, stormy sea roll all around us.” 

“Well,” Dan said. “I guess that’s a nice way of putting things.”

She reached up for his cheek. “It’s the truth.”

He opened his eyes and watched her, really seeming to see her for the first time. He kissed her gently between the eyes and let out a muffled sigh. “Well. We’ve still got a little time.”

“We’re going home tomorrow,” she reminded him. Back to the grind of streaming and gaming, which she knew she had no right to call a ‘grind’.

“I guess I got ahead of myself,” Dan said. She watched him curiously. “Like, usually I live right in the now. I try not to look too far ahead ‘cause then it’s not a ‘now’ moment. Why should I worry about the future when I’m holding a peach in my hand?”

Holly recognized his therapyspeak too easily. It reminded her of the multiple things her own therapist had said to her. “Because the future is scary.”

“No! We have each other! It won’t be scary anymore.”

She sighed. “Dan…”

“Yeah?” He looked so hopeful. She watched him from over her shoulder as she took a turn and tried to sit down. The wet sand made a squelching sound as she sank into it, and her nose wrinkled. 

“Why do you put up with me?”

He stared. “I don’t?”

“You have to. I’m not a cute little blonde Instagram model. I’m Holly. Holly with her therapist and her crying fits and her anxiety attacks and her pills.”

He stared at her. “I had pills, years ago. And I still have anxiety attacks, and a therapist…”

“And you can get through years without having flashbacks,” she said. Why was she doing this? Ruining a vacation? That couldn’t have been further ruined, true, but she was exhausted and she felt like a chunk of crap.

“But I get them,” he said. “I don’t know…what it’s like. How big your scars are. But I try to understand, when you say you need to be alone, that you don’t feel safe….have I been fucking up? Please tell me I haven’t been fucking up.”

“No, no,” said Holly. “I’m the one who’s messed up. I’m the one who keeps messing up,” she added.

“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Dan said.

“Then why haven’t you touched me?” she asked. “I know you had big plans for this trip but some things can’t be planned, shouldn’t be planned,” she said. “I just don’t want you to think I’m some untouchable moon goddess.”

“I didn’t ever think that. Didn’t ever say so,” Dan said. “Where is all of this coming from?”

She might as well simply say it. “I’m scared that someday you might look at him and decide that you could’ve had a better woman. Someone healthier. Someone who’s not crazy.”

Tears formed at the corner of his eyes, “No, no. Oh Holly no.” He squished her close to him, so close she worried she’d have a panic attack, but instead everything in her melted out – all of the tension, the fear, the bitterness. He kissed along the frame of her hair, against her face, and his face was full of anxiety. “I wouldn’t trade you for a thousand women! I wouldn’t trade you for anyone at all.” He squeezed her. 

“Oh,” she said. It was all she could get out. Dan was holding on to her like a life preserver. Did he honestly and truly care that much?

“Absolutely, honey. Don’t you love me? With my messed-up stomach and weird hang ups and totally boring vanilla ideas about sex?”

“Yes!” and that required no hesitation from her.

“Then everything you give me, I’m gonna give back to you,” he said. She swayed comfortably in his arms. She didn’t know why she kissed him, but she kissed him. With her nose running, and no make-up on, and rain rushing down over their faces. 

Hunger flamed up between them quicker than she could resist it. With a tug she was on his lap, and his hands were exploring her under the rain coat. Her hands found his ridiculous shorts, the tacked-shut fly, and his long, lean, muscular body. They ground together, groping and kissing. He ripped the coat open and pulled aside her bikini top, and all at once he was sucking on her breast with purpose, teeth riding over the crest, making her gasp and jerk her hips against his firm hold.

Only Dan would make her feel this wild. Made her want to do things she would never ever have considered doing in her wildest dreams before she met him. 

“Fuck,” he kept mumbling against her breasts. His hands were big and gentle but firm. But she couldn’t stop herself from shaking, trying to pull the halves of his outfit apart and feel his skin hot on hers. “Woah, okay! Okay, let’s…HOLLY!” He gently removed her from his lap and settled her on the warmth of the sand. “Are you sure you want to do this? Like really sure?” 

She nodded. Again, no hesitation or fear of what he’d see, that she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. If she asked him to stop he would. It was Dan – she could trust him completely. “Okay,” she said into his mouth.

“Okay,” he echoed. He rolled her onto his back and spent what felt like minutes looking at her, letting the rain soak them both as he removed the layers of cloth and rubber and vinyl lying between them. He watched her with a gentle, tender expression, and took kisses, licked her warmth, supped from her skin, nuzzled against the tips of her nipples and kissed his way between her legs.

Holly didn’t know if she could take being eaten out by him again. She felt oversensitive even though she hadn’t come yet. She wanted to lie still but her body countermanded the order. When he cupped her with his hand she aggressively bucked upward.

“How did you get so hot?” he asked. He seemed marginally amazed by the effect he had on her. Then again it was Dan – he wasn’t aware of the effect he had on any woman. 

“It’s you,” she said, and didn’t even tease him for his lack of observation. Dan gave her one of his little sideways smiles.

“I just want you to know - this is a hell of a lot better than windsurfing,” he told her.

And Holly laughed, the language leaving her as she tried to find the right thing to say to him. It was Dan – Dan was merriment and lightness. He was protection and humor. He was better to her than he was to himself, which she would get around to helping him with. Soaking wet with his boner pressing against her thigh, she wasn’t in the mood to chat. The kisses were merry, and when thunder rolled through her she dove down over his form and pinned him down, taking what she could of him – feasting on the leanness of his lines and the long, firm length of his body. 

She pulled off his t-shirt and shoved his jeans halfway down, and then her worship began, and she was mindless to anything but the sound of the rain, the feeling of the rain, the sound of Dan’s breathing and the way his skin danced in concert with her touch.Holly grated her teeth against his nipples, and her tongue found its way into the shallow of his hip. Her hands found his cock but he couldn’t take her teasing either. “Do you want me to stop?” she asked. Dan had to blink at her question, to force himself to put words together and actually concentrate on what she was saying.

“Only for a little while. C’mon,” he said, his hips rocking harshly enough beneath her to nearly unseat her. She realized then that Dan was trying to squirm his wallet out of his back pocket, but only when he handed her a condom did it all begin to make sense. Easily applied and easily smoothed down his cock, with a touch that was a deliberate, feathery tease. 

Laughing, he rolled her over onto the sand, and she encircled him with her thighs. It was really that simple, she realized abruptly – hip to hip and chest to chest. Eye to eye and tongue to tongue.

When it happened – in spite, and indeed, in defiance of all of Dan’s incredibly careful planning - it was nearly by accident. He slipped inside of her and their eyes connected. He gasped, his hips squirming against her open palms. Holly closed her eyes and surrendered to it, the wide wild importance of feeling like the most important person in this room, his life. Lightning flashed over her head, or maybe it was happening behind her tightly-closed lids.

And their moans of relief, of pleasure were taken away by the wind. When he came she could feel the pulse of him against her, could hear him groan against her earlobe. Everything seemed to be overly-sensitive, and she gasped and clutched down around him, harder than she had before. The little pulsing waves that came over her made him buck and heave, his face turning red, his features slackening and tightening as the passion came and went, slaking itself within her.

Later, when he tied the condom off to keep it from ending up in some errant seagull’s mouth (if she hadn’t loved him before that moment, she would have tumbled over for him, head and heels meeting, a giddy rush changing everything ) she pulled him close and held him there. The rain was letting up. They were soaked from head to toe, and it felt as if everything inside of Holly had shifted, as if the world were fresh and new, and she’d managed to open up a third door to some celestial plain of existence she hadn’t known existed until she’d gone to pieces in his arms.

“Way better than windsurfing,” he said happily, and kissed her again.

*** 

“So did your vag like…get really loose after you had the baby?”

Holly’s fork paused two inches from her mouth. “Suzy, you’ve gotta change the way you ask me these questions.” This was her first time out and about after having her stitches out, and Holly was restless to get back to some kind of work. She wanted to stream, and she wanted to take a long walk, and she wanted to hang out with her birds. 

Suzy poked at the steak she’d been eating. Holly didn’t ask questions about the latest fad diet that she and Arin had embarked on, but this one seemed to involve massive quantities of peanuts and meat. It was making Suzy grumpy; Holly never thought her spinach salad would be such an object of envy. “But did it?” she asked.

“I’m gonna get right up and go eat with the pigeons outside,” she said.

“Nooo!” Suzy said, staying her motion gently. “I know I’ve been really weird since you had the baby,” she admitted. “But I’ve been just really kinda…curious.” Suzy shrugged. “I’ve never had any of my friends have one.”

“Suzy, I’m not a science experiment,” complained Holly.

“I know!” Suzy said. “No, I know you’re not. I just wanted to know what it felt like, that’s all.”

Holly made a noncommittal humming noise. “It’s okay. But I don’t want you to use me to gross yourself out. You don’t have to have kids but I don’t want to be the test you use to prove that to yourself, okay?”

Suzy’s forehead wrinkled; she looked ready to cry, and Holly felt a wave of strong self-loathing as she blinked back some hot tears. Holly felt dirty and guilty, but she knew she needed to stand her ground or deal with the consequences more painfully down the line. “I know, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” Suzy said. 

“Don’t be,” Holly said. Suddenly she felt very exhausted. Suzy was just one of the many, many friends who kept asking impersonal and yet probing questions as she and Dan tried to settle into some kind of routine with Tam. She didn’t mind them most of the time – but when she wanted to have a relaxing time far away from her role as mother, the last thing she wanted was to be dragged back into the picture with questions about nipple cracking or the gross infirmities of her body. She didn’t want to talk about lullabies, or imagine what her life was going to be like when she was forty, with a teenager.

They finished lunch in near silence, which was fine for Holly. It gave her time to let her mind wander away, which was what she needed, wanted, to consider her healing body and her new status. “Let me pay for lunch. Then we’re gonna go to a spa and take a nice, long walk in the butterfly sanctuary.” Suzy’s artificial brightness only increased the feeling

Long ago she hadn’t wanted to be thought of as a mother. She hadn’t wanted to be thought of as anything but a forest keeper, a witch, a raiser of birds. Then Dan had happened.

He’d changed that part of her and she had no way.

She’d changed him, too.

***

She knew this day would happen, the day when he finally came to his senses and realized that they had different ambitions, different life expectations. She was hoping that it wouldn’t be during a livestream, while a puppy crawled all over them and licked their faces, but that was the time fate selected for them both.

Holly couldn’t keep the trepidation out of her voice – these were wide waters she was trying to cross with him. “You really want kids, Dan?”

“Um…” he flushed and scratched the back of his earlobe. They were on camera, and both of them were painfully aware of it, but Holly couldn’t still her curious tongue, her worried thoughts. “I didn’t think that I wanted them, no…”

“But?”

“But,” he said, “I’ve been thinking, and my very special girlfriend, who will remain nameless as of now, has me thinking about the future and what I want to do with my super hot jizz in the future.” Holly groaned and glanced at the laptop as chat became six times as active as it was before. She sighed and floated past the very, very angry teenage girls who wanted to cut her liver out with their bare hands and counted donations. At least AMFAR was going to end up with a hefty check thanks to her humiliation.

She managed to bite back her panic. She didn’t even throw up when Brian insisted on feeding her vegan yogurt while singing a Gilbert and Sullivan song to please the requirements of his torturous wheel. As she gargled in dim, violet-hued light of the bathroom, she only cried a little bit. Didn’t even find herself crawling into a ball and rocking back and forth. 

Her new meds must have been working spectacularly. She didn’t even feel like screaming.

Dan was the one who looked ready to scream when she left the bathroom and found him there, nervously hovering nearby, a curly-haired hummingbird. “Holly, I’m really sorry – I didn’t mean to just…say that without asking you if you were cool with it. I’m not good at the whole…”

“Acting like your partner’s opinions matter?” she asked. And oops – there were the tears.

“No! No, God no!” he said. He seemed to be visibly aware of how close the bathroom was to the filming area suddenly, and maneuvered her over a few steps. “No! I’m not good at keeping my big mouth shut.”

“You don’t have a big mouth,” she said. And he didn’t. Normally Dan was gentle, tender and discreet. Unless he thought something was funny. But he used his words as a blanket, wrapping them around her, trying to keep her from getting hurt most of the time.

“If you don’t want to have kids,” he said, “I don’t want to have them either.”

She stopped and stared at him. Dan’s mouth had moved, had come forth with words, but the words hadn’t made sense, not to her clouded mind. “Why?”

Dan gulped. “Because,” he said, “keeping you is worth it. No dream is worth losing you over.”

Holly felt everything in her relax. Even her jaw unclenched, her teeth had been held so tightly her jaw crackled. Dan could hear it, clearly – he winced. “I don’t want to think about it for awhile,” she apologized. “Let’s just enjoy now, okay?”

“Okay,” he vowed. “We’ll just relax here.” The words were an echo, but he meant them sincerely. 

Holly sat down beside him heavily. She didn’t want to think of the future, of the possibility that someday they’d have to make the ultimate choice. She loved Dan. She loved being with Dan.

A tiny new part of her heart cracked open. A part of her that she’d always feared to probe too deeply. Maybe, she realized suddenly, having a kid with him might be a thing she could do. Maybe she wouldn’t want to run away. Maybe he’d keep on loving her, even with her ugly scars and terrible flaws. If he could when she couldn’t even forgive herself for them, then she suppose she’d have to agree.

“Let me bring you tea,” he said, with that soft, tepid sweetness of his. Like the tea that was probably brewing on the stove, she thought idly. 

“That would be really wonderful,” she said. And as he got her coffee, she thought to herself that maybe, just maybe, her own fears were worth overcoming for him. Maybe she could be a mother. Maybe she’d do a better job, wouldn’t fall down on the job, wouldn’t leave herself at the side of the road.

She watched him go away, and he kept on giving loving, concerned looks back toward the spot where she stood as he went about retrieving it for her. 

And for the millionth time, she fell in love.

*** 

After the butterflies, Holly sat alone on a park bench for a few hours. Just to have the silence. Just to grasp a little bit of peace and hold it against her chest. 

In spite of herself she felt guilty. Dan was home with the baby. He was going to need to go in to the studio tomorrow. She needed to prepare for the Dice, Camera Action game she’d be DMing the next day. She needed, she wanted, she needed.

All of the peace in her heart evaporated like steam. And suddenly panic hit her right in the chest, like a blow, a knife, a sledgehammer. It was like having her ribs cracked open by a giant; horrifying, filling her with a sensation of being squeezed between brick walls. She needed to run, suddenly – to be far away from the hopeless and tangled fear that no matter what she did and no matter who she saw, it wasn’t going to be enough.

She got up and took the purse. Later she would regret her choice – but for the moment she only wanted to get far away from the scene, to keep thinking. To keep the painful pounding of fear out of the back of her mind.

*** 

The wedding was quiet and small, held out in the middle of the woods and under a huppah at his parent’s request. Holly had been glad to have the small party over with. The little cottage he’d rented down by the beach was within walking distance of the woods – it was the best of all of the worlds they both loved. 

Dan was in a pullover, his carefully pressed suit a thing of the past. Holly hummed as she bathed by the fire he’d lit, and he watched her from the bed. Then they switched positions, and she slid into the silky confines of his cornflower blue kimono and stared at the golden curve of his hip as he bent and threw a log on the fire. Somehow, in the quiet, surrounded by knotty pine and rose-spattered wallpaper, Holly felt awfully shy. And she didn’t know why she felt that way! What name could she give to that creeping sensation of complete strangeness that had overcome her form? Holly had never felt so small in her life as she watched Dan dry himself, his cock hanging heavy and filling with blood between his thighs. It was an awkward feeling – he’d seen her naked! He’d been inside of her body. Why was she shy, watching him get dry again, sitting there in his cast-off kimono, watching as he donned a thick satin robe that they could’ve easily been lost in.  
He turned to her and she made room on the bed.

He kept a weirdly gentlemanly distance between them. “I’ve never done this as a husband before,” he said suddenly. “What do I even do with you?”

She laughed; it felt good to hear the confusion in his voice, see his confusion in the arch of his eyebrows. She felt a thousand times less lonely when he looked this rudderless. “All the things you did before. Just closer together.”

“Thank you, Missus Avidan,” he said. “Good work. Whenever I can’t find your sweet, sweet pussy, I will ask you for a flashlight.”

She elbowed him. “I swear, you are the worst. The wooorst!” she fell back on the bed and giggled. Dan was right over her, laughing along.

“Did you mean the best? ‘Cause I’m totally the best, you’re just in like, denial!” he insisted.

“Denial?! Me!?!”

He kissed her neck and rested beside her. She could smell the cake on his breath and feel the heat pouring off of his body. “River is denial in your pussy…”

“That is a terrible metaphor,” she said. “Is it even a metaphor?”

She looked down at him. He had tears in his eyes. “Has anyone ever told you how amazing you are?” he asked.

“You,” she said. “Multiple times.”

“Oh, well…I’d better get to work on that,” he said.

Sex seemed to last longer this time – an age of rolling and touching and squeezing places she didn’t know were sensitive – inches that were warm and wet and ready for him as he was for her. 

There seemed to be hours left to explore him, so hours were what they took, sampling from each other’s skin, each other’s flesh. The slow burn of the connection when it came this time made her legs shake and her eyes water.

His tears dripped onto her cheeks as he ground himself against her. “I’m home,” he said, in a tiny, teary voice, kissing his way up and down her jawline – praising her quietly, as if she were as infinitely precious.

When they came that night, it was simultaneous. Like a bad romance novel, like something she thought had never existed and had never expected to feel. She turned her head to cry out her own bliss, and he kissed the tears she left behind away.

***

Twin headlights cut across the park. 

Holly realized she should’ve expected him to come for her, that he would start worrying when it was past dark and she hadn’t returned for dinner. Holly stood up, rubbing her arms, watching Dan come towards her, fear in his expression, his dark eyes overfilled with tears.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked. “You haven’t been answering your phone and…”

“…Remember our deal?” she asked. Even saying those words made her feel small and sheepish, still a little girl fighting with her mother. Dan’s features crumpled slightly – he had remembered their deal and she knew so, but perhaps it was a bit cruel to mention it, especially when they had.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you didn’t answer your phone and I got scared.”

She frowned. “I’ll never leave you, Dan.”

“I know,” he said. He seemed to brace himself in that moment – trying to convince himself that if he said it with enough confidence it would be true. “I know you’d never go anywhere or leave me alone with the baby. I just want to know you’ll come back.”

Holly heard the desperation in his voice. “I’ve just been scared, lately,” she said.

“Why?”

She rubbed her upper arms. “Remember when we first started to go out? Everything was sex out the ears. And now we have a baby. I just got stitches pulled out of my crotch and the last thing I want to do is have sex. What if it never comes back? What if you don’t want me anymore?” she asked. “What if you want to leave when this gets old, or the…”

“Shh,” he whispered. She looked up and caught his gaze. “I was trying to be respectful,” he said. She stared at him as if he’d grown three heads. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Everything that happened when you were having the baby – I was so scared something would go wrong. I didn’t want to hurt you by mistake.”

They moved toward one another, silently. He was holding her hands, and the distance between them She kissed the place where his neck met his t-shirt and tasted a rare drop of sweat.

“I told you you could go,” he reminded her. “If you needed to stop, or wanted me to go away for awhile, I would…but we also said forever. You can stay as long as you like, but I…”

“We’re both being dumb,” she said against his throat.

“Yeah,” he said. “But you knew I was dumb when you married me, baby.”

She rolled her eyes. It made them stop tearing up. “Where did you leave our daughter.”

“With Arin and Suzy. He’s still over the moon about her,” He admitted. She could tell that was shorthand for ‘but Suzy doesn’t. As if she didn’t know that already.

“Hey.” He cupped her shoulder. “You’re Holly to me. You’ve been Holly ever since I saw you for the first time at your desk back at Maker. Everything else that’s happened just made you more ‘Holly’ to me. Even when you’re crying on the floor or curled up in a blanket fort, or when you’re holding the baby or kissing me good morning. All of those things make you Holly, okay?” He winced. “Please tell me that I’m making sense.”

What could she do but bend him backwards and give him a hard, proper kiss for that? She just pinned him still and kissed him, trying to make him whimper. “Yeah,” she said against his lips.

Yeah. 

Well, that was how the best of things tended to begin. 

“I’m glad you love me, even though I’m a bruised pear.”

He winced at her simile. “You’re not damaged,” he said. “You’re you. Not damaged, not lacking – just you.”

“Thank you,” she said. Neither was he, she thought to herself. Neither was either of them, really.

Not even on the first day they met.

**** 

Her fingers had been tacky with glue when she shook hands with Dan for the first time. They were standing side-by-side at Maker, in front of her cubicle, with her witchy mini-altar and a small stuffed bird sitting on her fiberboard desk. He was wearing a shirt with sleeves too short and pants’ cuffs that made him look enormously tall. He was the sort of guy who hadn’t been meant for an office setting; the stage, the studio, that was what his heart was intended for.

“Holly. That’s a pretty name. I like your hair, it’s cool.”

She self-consciously touched the edges of it. “What’s so cool about it?” she asked.

He flushed. “Um, well…it’s really…nice?” he said. “And an awesome shade of blue. My favorite shade. And the cut is fucking rad.”

“Huh.” She tugged at the edge of one of them. It had been red until she’d dumped her ex that very morning, at what point she’d had it hacked off and bleached it royal blue. “Thank you. You look nice too. I like your hair, too.”

He made a face. “I’m trying to grow it out a little. I know I’ve gotta keep it short ‘cause of the office’s policy but it’s not like, rock and roll to have a bowl cut.”

“Do you have a band?”

“Yeah, they’re like…it’s a long story. A comedy band. I’m a ninja with a huge dick and my best friend’s a ninja who kills people a lot.”

She tilted her head and he shoved his hands into his pants. “You have to see it to believe it,” he said confidently.

She believed it. “Maybe I’ll come see you sometime.”

“Oh, we have a video! Let me show you!” he struggled to get his iphone out of the front pocket of his jeans. She peeked around his arm and he – at the lowest volume possible –played a very odd, very low-budget music video, where he did indeed play a ninja who was apparently the world’s greatest lover. In a kimono. With huge running shoes. The same ones he was wearing now.

Hmm. Fascinating.

“Shit, I’ve got a meeting in a minute.” He groaned, stuffed the phone into her hand. “I’ll see you again Holly!”

“You’ll have to,” she pointed out reasonably. “You work right next to me. And don’t you want…?”

He laughed. “I like you, you’re funny,” he said softly. And then he was gone, and she was alone, holding his phone, with forty different thoughts swirling through her mind at once.

She placed the phone in his cubicle. There were forty different swatches of fabric, a huge bowl of Mike and Ikes, and a framed picture of him with what appeared to be two older female relatives there already.

As she sat alone and worked through the afternoon’s backlog, she thought it would be fun to go to his gig. To see the start of something new.

It was the beginning of something. What, exactly, she couldn’t be sure.


End file.
